That's Another Story: The Autobiography Read online

  No one could have been more surprised than me by the success of the film. When I first went to see it in a little screening room in Soho, I was appalled by my performance, thinking it over the top and amateurish, and again, as with the play, I thought both it and I would be dumped on from a great height by critics and public alike. I wanted to run and hide, so when Lewis mentioned that Columbia Pictures had bought it for release and that on top of that there was talk of Oscar nominations, I thought he had gone completely off his rocker with optimism when the film would probably not even make it in the ‘straight to video’ category. Of course it did go to video but before doing so the play enjoyed a huge, worldwide, theatrical distribution and success.

  The film opened in London first, in the spring of 1983, with a royal première at the Odeon, Leicester Square, attended by the Duke of Edinburgh. He sat in the row in front of me and when the film finished he turned round to give me a huge thumbs-up and a wink. My mother came down from Birmingham and, unable to get through the crowd in order to get into the cinema, she called to a policeman for help. Pointing up at my name on the hoarding she told him in no uncertain terms that that was her daughter up there in lights and could she please come through or else.

  The following autumn the film was to open in the States and that August Columbia Pictures’ mighty publicity machine was set in motion. I flew with my friend Ros Toland to New York and was booked into a huge corner suite at the Plaza Hotel, looking directly out over Central Park. One of my fellow guests was the King of Morocco, who had taken the entire first floor of this enormous hotel, together with his massive entourage and his three hundred items of personal luggage. Ros, who had been the publicist for the film of Educating Rita in Britain, had a refreshingly irreverent attitude towards the Hollywood establishment as well as a wicked sense of humour, so I had asked her to accompany me, both as a friend and as a personal publicist to help stave off the worst excesses of the publicity demands. I fell for New York instantly and even today the first sight of Manhattan, lit up as you drive across the midtown bridge from the airport, makes my skin prickle. I think it one of the most beautiful sights in the world. Everywhere I turned seemed to be a movie location; in fact the whole place felt like a film set. It was buzzy, neurotic, with an ambient sense of excitement and danger. There were warnings back then that to veer off the beaten track was not advisable and ending up in the wrong street in the wrong neighbourhood could spell disaster for a bumbling tourist. I was enthralled by the city and still am.

  Waiting for me when I arrived at the hotel was a script that had been sent to me by Burt Reynolds, whom I instantly confused with Burt Lancaster. It seemed he had seen the film and wanted me for his next project. I thought: This is it! I’ve arrived! Look out, Hollywood, I’m here! Then I read it. It was not only awful but I was being asked to play an upper-class New York stockbroker type: why? So I duly turned it down, and in any case I wanted to do the publicity tour that was to take me in some style around America, Australia and Europe. However, Burt wasn’t taking no for an answer and sent a message, saying that even if I didn’t want to do his film, he would like to meet me. This I couldn’t resist. He flew Ros and me down to his home town of Jupiter, yes, Jupiter in Florida, where as we drove through the town we noticed several buildings emblazoned with the letters BR. We were booked into an hotel and that very night we were to meet Burt over dinner at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater where a production of The Hasty Heart by John Patrick was playing, starring the woman who played the eldest daughter of the Von Trapp family in the film of The Sound of Music. We were very excited. When Ros informed me that the man we were meeting was in fact not Burt Lancaster of From Here to Eternity and Elmer Gantry but Burt Reynolds of Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run fame, I was thrilled. Then I recalled an interview that I had seen on television in the recent past with Dolly Parton, who had just done a film with him, and she said that they had two things in common: they both had forty-inch chests and they both wore wigs; the latter comment Burt was apparently not too pleased about. So as we were being driven to dinner in our stretch limo through the streets of Jupiter City, I regaled Ros with this story, adding that above all else we must not mention the wig or refer to it in any way, however obliquely.

  ‘Hi, Julie, Burt Reynolds, welcome to Jupiter!’

  He was quite short, wearing built-up shoes, and had gorgeous, dark, twinkly eyes. I kept my own directed straight at them, never letting them stray north to the unnaturally dark thatch lurking at the top of his conker-brown forehead.

  ‘Thank you, WIG!’ It just came out, exploding out of my mouth without a thought. Well, there was a thought; it was don’t mention the wig! I then scrabbled about trying to recover, with verbiage spilling everywhere: ‘Yes, yes . . . thank you . . . wig . . .’ Oh God, there it goes again! ‘Wig . . .’ Please, brain, stop it . . . Try to engage, please! ‘Wig ... wig . . . wiggoing to enjoy this . . . our . . . selves . . . tonight. It’s, it’s so . . . let . . . jet . . . lagged . . . I am so get-lagged . . . erm.’

  Burt instantly came to the rescue, ushering us through with loads of bonhomie and a joke that made us laugh, but which I cannot for the life of me remember now.

  We were seated for dinner in a private box at the back of the theatre, with a huge black bodyguard who according to Burt had been something high up in the Miami State Police. The first half of the evening was a little strained, mainly because we were forced to sit through the first half of a rather turgid production of a play long past its sell-by. Then when the interval came along like a cold drink in the desert, Burt pressed something and a soundproof glass screen glided across the front of our booth, thankfully remaining there for the rest of the night. Once we were released from the coma-inducing show, the evening bubbled into life with Burt getting more laughs and engaging our interest in a way that The Hasty Heart could never hope to do. His parting shot was, ‘Look, I’m not going to try to force you to do it, although I know you’d enjoy yourself, and I’m not going to try to force you to do the movie either!’

  The next day we were taken by limo to his house and watched as his helicopter landed on the lawn in the back garden to take us to Miami airport. Burt gave me his phone number and said that if there was ever anything I needed that he could help with, I was to give him a ring. We were then whisked up and out of Jupiter to land on the runway a matter of yards from the aircraft that was to take us back to New York. What on earth the planeload of gawping, bemused travellers thought of these two young, slightly scruffy girls getting out of a helicopter and straight into first class, I dread to think. All I can say is I’m glad it was Burt Reynolds of Cannonball Run fame and if I am to believe the numerous people whom I have met since who have worked with him, I missed out on that film and a whole lot of fun.

  Back in New York the press junket began with twenty television interviews, one after the other, followed by a seemingly endless round of newspaper interviews. Michael, Lewis and I were each ensconced in a separate room at the Plaza, visited in turn by individual journalists. That evening Michael took us to Elaine’s, a famous restaurant frequented by celebrities of different types. The walls were covered in their photographs, personally signed to Elaine with some chatty message usually followed by a lot of exclamation marks. So when on arrival I asked Michael where the Ladies’ was and he instructed me to turn left at Woody Allen, I went along the wall scanning the photos for Woody’s little elfin portrait and ended up tripping over the real man’s feet. We sat in the corner, with Michael pointing out anyone famous as they came in, with all the fresh excitement of a boy actor. ‘That’s Henry Mancini . . . You know, “Moon River”.’ The charming thing about the whole experience was that Michael was more famous than any of them.

  Ros and I had a ball in New York; she had friends there and we were out most night, painting the town some colour or other. On my last morning I woke up inexplicably wearing a New York City Department of Sanitation T-shirt. I never quite worked out where that came from but
perhaps after the painting I’d done a bit of mopping and dusting.

  Next stop was Los Angeles; the drive in from the airport there, of course, is a completely different kettle of fish. It is a massive, sprawling suburb, which is all sub and no actual urb, acre upon acre of tatty, low-rise housing, with no character whatsoever. We were checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, a pink palace of a place set in the heart of the not-at-all-tatty and highly manicured Beverly Hills, which is known for its celebrity clientele and its famous Polo Lounge, dubbed by Bette Midler the Polio Lounge.

  It was Labor Day weekend, which gave us time to ourselves, so we headed to the pool. We were shown to our loungers by two tanned, athletic-looking young men, sporting Ray-Bans and dressed in blindingly white singlets and shorts. Ros, with her wonderfully dry, irreverent wit, and I sat there agog, chortling at the assembled clientele. I had never seen so much gold in one place. There was enough there to solve Third World debt. When one woman dived in I checked the muscular young men to see whether they displayed any signs of concern; they didn’t, but it was a wonder she ever came up again. She was covered in what is nowadays referred to as bling and so, it seemed, was everyone else there: great lumps of the stuff hanging from ear-lobes, necks and wrists, not pretty or delicate or subtle. In fact, a block of gold just strapped to a person’s front or perhaps a bank statement made into a sunhat would have been more aesthetically appealing, whilst creating a similar impression.

  Just before we left I appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and regaled him with stories of the Beverly Hills Hotel, such as how we were not allowed into the Polo Lounge with its snobby old dress code because one of us was wearing denim, and that in fact the most smartly dressed people in there were the hookers, but that was apparently absolutely fine with the management because they looked right. I also told him that, after staying there, 50 per cent of my luggage was now towelling. Johnny loved all this and invited me on the show twice in one week to talk about it further; the only other person ever, at that time, to have appeared on the show twice in one week was, strangely enough, Burt Reynolds. Unfortunately the hotel didn’t see the funny side of it, and I was never booked in there again.

  I had always had a fascination for Los Angeles. For as long as I can remember, every Christmas we received a card from my mother’s second cousins who lived there. The card was in the form of a photograph of the entire family beaming festively and somewhat glamorously at the camera. They were called the Takahashis and, yes, as you have no doubt surmised from the name, they were and indeed are Japanese, or at least Japanese-American.

  My great-aunt Margaret had gone to California from Ireland in the 1920s and worked as a waitress on a train. One day she was taken ill and a Japanese doctor tended her. The result was that even though neither could speak the other’s language, they nevertheless fell in love and subsequently got married. They settled in the Japanese quarter and their children in turn married Japanese-Americans. During the Second World War they were interned in a camp, even though they had never been to Japan, knew very little about its culture and, to all intents and purposes, saw themselves as American. It was when my mother was a child at home in Ireland that her cousin Margaret first got in contact via the local post office. They were both aged around eleven at the time and she had been writing to them, never having met them, ever since. So it was with great excitement that I contacted the Takahashis and told them I was in Los Angeles.

  I was invited to dinner at their home downtown and felt instantly at ease with them. There was something strangely familiar that I couldn’t quite name: something in a turn of phrase, a knowing glance, the tone of someone’s laugh, the set of someone’s mouth, my mother’s eyes surrounded by an Oriental face, the features of a distant cousin. They looked Japanese but there was a liberal, if subtle, sprinkling of O’Brien genes. They joked that they thought their small eyes were down to being Japanese, but that now, having met me, they could see that they were in fact Irish eyes. I booked tickets for them for the Los Angeles première and enjoyed watching the Columbia Pictures representative who, after ushering them in, turned to a colleague and mouthed silently, but with the pronounced articulation of someone communicating with the deaf, ‘Her cousins?’

  Just as I was about to leave Los Angeles, a call came for me to appear on Good Morning America with the famous television journalist, Barbara Walters (no relation). It was to happen live, the very next day in New York, so I was to fly there immediately that evening. I arrived at the airport in Los Angeles to find that the flight was delayed because La Guardia airport in New York was fogbound. The plane eventually took off well past midnight. When we arrived in the vicinity of La Guardia, an announcement was made to the effect that the airport was still fogbound and would we please be a little patient. They did not send Ros with me on this particular journey as it wasn’t deemed necessary just for one night and so I was travelling alone in first class, seated next to a man who, as we circled the airport waiting to make a landing, was becoming increasingly nervous. Eventually the captain’s voice came over the speaker system with the comforting announcement: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if I could just have your attention for a moment. It seems that this fog just isn’t going to lift so we are proposing that we land at Newark instead of La Guardia as we are running out of fuel fast.’

  With that the man sitting next to me jumped up out of his seat and shouted, purple-faced, at the blank wall in front of him, ‘You asshole!’

  We landed at Newark airport some twenty minutes later at about four o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t a clue where Newark was, so it might just as well have been in Brazil. I couldn’t remember where I was staying and, needless to say, the Columbia Pictures rep, for whom I had no contact number and who was meant to meet me off the flight about six hours earlier at another airport entirely, was not there. I had no dollars, as they were in my hotel room back in LA, and I had been assured at the time that not only would I not need any money, as I would be met and taken everywhere by a rep in a limo, but that I would be back within twenty-four hours. Stiff with panic, I wandered out of the deserted airport in the vain hope that at least there would be a car waiting for me. No such luck. I then went towards the taxi rank and heard a woman ask whether anyone wanted to share a cab into Manhattan. At exactly the same time the name of the hotel I was booked into popped inexplicably into my head and I took her up on the offer, along with another woman and a man. I had no idea how far we had to go and was shocked to see the familiar skyline within minutes of setting off; it seemed Newark was a lot nearer Manhattan than La Guardia. I sat in the back of the cab, desperately trying to think how I was going to explain my lack of funds, and then when the cab pulled up outside my expensive-looking hotel it just exploded out of my mouth, just as Burt Reynolds’ wig had done only a few days earlier: ‘Erm . . . I’m really sorry but I haven’t got any money.’ Absolute silence. ‘Erm . . . Columbia Pictures were meant to be meeting me . . . I’m so sorry . . .’

  ‘Oh, that’s OK. Forget it.’ This was the nice lady to my right.

  ‘Oh, really . . . Columbia Pictures, huh?’ This was the rather cross man sitting in the front and addressing me as if I were a halfwit claiming to be a brain surgeon.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got a film opening here.’

  ‘It’s all right, really.’ The kind woman again.

  ‘Oh really? You’ve got a film opening and you have no money.’ The cross man, now sarcastic as well as patronising.

  ‘Yes, I’m an actress, I was just put on a plane last night. I’m on Good Morning America in the morning.’ Me, squirming.

  ‘It’s fine, really.’ The woman.

  ‘You are a movie star appearing on Good Morning America and you can’t pay for your cab ride?’ The man.

  ‘Yes, I know it sounds odd, but . . . I’m so sorry.’ Me, squirming even more.

  ‘Yeah, you betcha it sounds odd.’ The man, very cross and sneery. He turned his head away and raised his palm towards me in a ‘talk to the
hand’ kind of gesture. ‘Yeah, whatever, lady. We’ll pay.’

  I skulked off into my very posh and impressive-looking hotel. It never crossed my mind that I could have got the hotel to pay the cab for me and saved myself the humiliation of trying to explain the unbelievable. A lesson was learnt that night. Now I always make sure that I have enough money on me for a cab, a contact number and an address, no matter who says that they have organised everything.

  Next morning after about an hour and a half’s sleep I was sitting in front of a make-up mirror at the studio, supposedly getting ready for the show. Even though there were magenta-coloured circles under my puffy, bloodshot eyes, which had virtually disappeared inside my head, I had for the first time in my life elected to wear no make-up, as the thought of touching my eyes, let alone trying to define them with eyeliner and mascara, was too much to bear. Never had the term ‘red eye’, the name given to the Los Angeles to New York flight, been more appropriate. Just before we went on air and the interview was about to start, I happened to mention to Barbara, who was sitting there in fully coiffured, beautifully dressed, perfumed splendour, that I hadn’t bothered with make-up. Even beneath the powdered, orange perfection of her own freshly applied maquillage, I could see that she had paled at the thought of appearing bare-faced on national television and, indeed, when we went on air, she thought it so significant that she turned straight to camera and announced, ‘She has no make-up on, everybody!’ I saw a playback of the two of us afterwards and could see only too clearly why it is necessary to wear at least a modicum of slap in a situation such as this; not only because of the draining effect of the powerful studio lighting, but also because up against Barbara’s extraordinary hue I looked positively green.